Picard falls for the new head of Stellar Cartography, Nella Daren. They play music together. Later, he sends her on a dangerous mission, and temporarily believes she has died. He feels that he could never risk her life that way again, so she puts in for a transfer. Bad luck for her, since that's pretty much going to be a demotion.
It's nice to give the whole-episode callback to "The Inner Light", and I like the whole thing being music-themed, but not enough is happening here. It would have been better to give the romance more time to develop–several episodes, at least. As it is, it seems a bit too quick coming on, and Picard's sudden realization that he's in too deep and can't bear to lose Daren just doesn't ring true for me.
Really, the problem point for me was before that–when he stopped her after Riker assigned her to the mission, as though they hadn't just addressed this issue. If he'd only been reluctant to send her on a mission after the near-death experience had rattled him, it'd fit better, but at this stage it was fairly routine. There was the possibility of things going wrong, as we saw, but Picard should have been able to handle that better.
Notes
- Picard indicates that there are no regulations against a Captain being in a relationship with a member of his crew.